Let them put their personal safety where their big, loud mouths are

So, it looks like there is actually going to be some kind of vote in the Senate on getting at least minimal control over the wide open sales and trafficking of guns in this country. President Obama said in his State of the Union address that victims of gun crimes deserve such a vote, and, to his credit, he has continued to push for those votes, even when the Conventional Wisdom within the Washington Beltway says that imposing any kind of control of guns is impossible. Of course, that same Conventional Wisdom said that Barack Obama had no chance to be reelected last year.

After the tragic slaughter of twenty six-year-olds and their teachers who tried to protect them at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut last December, I wrote to all of my elected (though not by me) representatives from Texas in Washington -  namely Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and Rep. Kevin Brady - and asked them to please support sensible gun control laws to reign in the senseless mass slaughter that is taking place in our country. What I got back from each of them were form letters that might have been written by Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association. None of the gun laws that are proposed would have saved any of the children at Sandy Hook, they said. Background checks do no good, they said, because criminals will not submit to background checks. We can't ban assault rifles because of the Second Amendment, they said. Even though when the Founders wrote that amendment, they had muskets in mind, not assault rifles with high capacity magazines that can shoot more than one hundred bullets in a matter of seconds and rip apart the tiny bodies of innocent children, not to mention the lives of those who love them.

Those responses made me very angry and disgusted with the quality of people who allegedly represent me - but not really - in Washington. In reality, they represent the NRA and the oil companies and the insurance companies and all the big spenders who have given them millions of dollars to purchase any principles they might have had.

But wait, I thought. What if these guys really believe this stuff? What if these really are their true principles? How could they prove their sincerity?

Then, it came to me - a modest proposal for how Cornyn, Cruz, Brady, et. al., can stand foursquare for their belief that guns should not be fettered in any way and people should be able to brandish those weapons in any venue.  

I suggest to my esteemed Congresspeople that they should each introduce legislation in the Senate and the House to allow visitors to each of those Houses to freely carry any weapon which they choose, assault weapons with high capacity magazines not restricted. No background checks allowed. After all, Second Amendment! Don't the people have a right to carry their beloved weapons into "their" House?

In this way, our elected representatives can be just as safe in their workplace as our school children and every other ordinary citizen in this country. And my courageous representatives will have the opportunity to put their own personal safety on the line, right along with the school children. In other words, they can put their personal safety where their big, loud mouths are. Don't you think that seems fair?